A note:

On 12/9/20 11:05 AM, Konstantin Olchanski wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 09, 2020 at 10:25:36AM -0500, Larry Linder wrote:
>>
>> Everytime I am forced to use Windows 10 my neurons rebel at the moron
>> aware SW.
>>
> 
> I am sorry you are in the position where you are forced to use Windows,
> I feel lucky that I can "just say no!".

For those of us who must work in the "real world", unfortunately many 
applications have no work alike for Linux, but typically proprietary 
licensed for fee applications only for MS Win and/or Mac OS X.  Anything 
proprietary for Mac OS X is impossible to legally use in the USA and EU 
other than on an Apple (hardware) platform.  I will not use a dual-boot 
system as this is both cumbersome and open to all sorts of compromises, 
particularly from MS Win.  I have tried Cross-over (supported Wine), but 
it is too limited in the reliable support of current MS Win 
applications.  I currently use MS Win 10 under both VMware Player and 
VirtualBox under, first, SL, and now Ubuntu LTS, as the platform I use 
did come with a MS Win license.  Under this MS Win 10, I use proprietary 
applications not available for Linux.  I also find MS Win 10 miserable 
and cumbersome, with a horrid and time consuming upgrade process (I 
experienced that because the current production release of an 
application I use required a later release of MS Win 10 than was on the 
virtual machine and I had to waste a day whilst MS Win 10 upgraded, 
rebooted, upgraded, rebooted, etc., but one does not have a choice.

I do use LibreOffice and other workalikes.

This problem is not new.  When Sun was still a vendor and had desktop 
workstations with a Sparc platform, it was forced to introduce an add-on 
board with a X86 processor to run MS Win under Solaris so that such MS 
Win applications could be run, as many users did not want two desktop 
machines, a Sun for "real" work, and a MS Win box for "general use 
applications".  Sun originally bought VirtualBox for this purpose once 
Sun had switched to a X86 hardware platform.  Now of course this is all 
part of Oracle as the oligopolies increase.

> 
>>
>> As the supporters of GNU retire and die off - the new generation has no
>> desire to stay the course.
>>
> 
> This works both ways. I used to think Richard Stallman was a cook and a crank.
> 
> Today I see his apocalyptic predictions for evils of "unfree" software
> come true (and then some) in the cell phone universe.
> 
> If we live through covid, I may yet become an FSF card carrying member! (Likely
> with the Torvaldskist schismatic branchnicks who refuse to say "GNU/Linux").
> 
>>
>> The bright side is that there is no automatic self destruct mechanism in
>> Linux so even when the official support is ended we can still user what
>> we have but not be able to upgrade our applications.
>>
> 
> So true, if not for C++11, I would say "SL6 forever!".
> 
>>
>> ... the cost of just dumping 50 systems and install new OS's and
>> applications is beyond our budget. ...
>>
> 
> Even for people with deep pockets, administrative, logistics, downtime
> and man power costs make it impractical, except for "once every 5-10 years".
> 
> People who just invested in a migration to el8 to be told now that
> they have to migrate again next year must be severely unhappy right now.
> 
> I cannot fathom how Red Hat did not "ask around" before going public
> with their decision. (unless the decision was forced on them externally).
> 
>>
>> So the sword had many sharp edges.
>>
> 
> Well, it is the dull sword that is most dangerous (to the user). Join
> your local Iaido club and find out for yourself.
>